Once the hard part, which is to keep the metal plate floating stable, is taking care of, the rest is the same that needs to be done for other record players. Keeping a constant speed isn't that hard, because the plate is heavy, so it will resist rapid speed changes. You only have to correct for slow changes.

So this record player will not be better than other record players because of the missing shaft, and it won't be worse, either. Given same pickup head, same speed control technology, and same pickup circuit, it will perform the same.

Surely a decent tester would have given the turntable a nudge (horizontally and vertically) pretty early on. And banged the table with something reasonably heavy and solid. Pretty pointless 'listening' to the thing third hand via a flaky broadband connection.

Wetter it’s worth the money (price/quality) is a completely different ball game. Tons of expensive crap out there. Starting with 10.000 USD cables

It's a silly idea. Saw one of these in operation recently. It takes a couple of minutes to change a record and the platter is susceptible to eccentricity causing the same effect as playing a warped record. Just a gimmick.

Wetter it’s worth the money (price/quality) is a completely different ball game. Tons of expensive crap out there. Starting with 10.000 USD cables

It's a silly idea. Saw one of these in operation recently. It takes a couple of minutes to change a record and the platter is susceptible to eccentricity causing the same effect as playing a warped record. Just a gimmick.

If it wobbles than it's gonna sound like crap and wear out your records. Verdict: USELESS GARBAGE If you want a novelty to play worn out records with the last few times, get a record car.

Surely a decent tester would have given the turntable a nudge (horizontally and vertically) pretty early on. And banged the table with something reasonably heavy and solid. Pretty pointless 'listening' to the thing third hand via a flaky broadband connection.

Just look at the wobble of that platter in the video, even without nudging it.Not convinced...

Surely a decent tester would have given the turntable a nudge (horizontally and vertically) pretty early on. And banged the table with something reasonably heavy and solid. Pretty pointless 'listening' to the thing third hand via a flaky broadband connection.

Just look at the wobble of that platter in the video, even without nudging it.Not convinced...

For crying out loud. I think everybody agrees that it's not high end (hifi wise). Is it so hard to admit it looks darn cool? They got lot of flak of being a scam and it would never happen, but they did procedure a working turntable...

There is lots of stuf looking cool, but useless. There is worse shit to watch on YT imo.

For crying out loud. I think everybody agrees that it's not high end (hifi wise). Is it so hard to admit it looks darn cool? They got lot of flak of being a scam and it would never happen, but they did procedure a working turntable...

There is lots of stuf looking cool, but useless. There is worse shit to watch on YT imo.

If it wants to look cool, it should not look woobly, but should be floating nice and smooth and steady. And the ridiculous noise of those pins being driven up or down does not help either. For $2600 there must be a way to convey a feeling of quality there.

(Or maybe it was just the guy's stupid hat which took away from the quality feeling? Can't blame the Mag Lev guys for that bit...)

Why are people even wasting their time and money on LP playback these days? We've had the superior format (CD) for almost 30 years, and voluminous digital storage for nearly 20 where you're not even limited to a fixed resolution. Seeing people spend thousands of dollars on turntables (not to mention 10% distortion triode amplifiers) convinces me that evolution has taken a 180° turn in the audio world.

Why are people even wasting their time and money on LP playback these days? We've had the superior format (CD) for almost 30 years, and voluminous digital storage for nearly 20 where you're not even limited to a fixed resolution. Seeing people spend thousands of dollars on turntables (not to mention 10% distortion triode amplifiers) convinces me that evolution has taken a 180° turn in the audio world.

Not going to get into the whole debate, you can google it. But if any amp has 10% distortion, it's just plain broken.

Why are people even wasting their time and money on LP playback these days? We've had the superior format (CD) for almost 30 years, and voluminous digital storage for nearly 20 where you're not even limited to a fixed resolution. Seeing people spend thousands of dollars on turntables (not to mention 10% distortion triode amplifiers) convinces me that evolution has taken a 180° turn in the audio world.

I don't think this is a turn per se. While technology has constantly evolved in the audio field, it seems to have reached a state in the 70's which a significant number of people consider as the epitome of audio gear. Audio devices are still evolving with modern technology, but this 70's base technology is still there in parallel. Not really a turn, more like a parallel path which is still alive.

The why is hard to completely explain rationally. But whereas there's a lot of scam in the audiophool world (awfully expensive stuff that makes practically no difference), this particular branch has something different. Tube-based amplifiers and vinyl record turntables *objectively* sound different from digital audio and solid-state amplifiers. This difference is what some amateurs are after. On a purely technical level, most of those differences translate to degraded characteristics (higher distortion for instance), but tend to sound more pleasing to some ears. We don't listen to music with an R&S analyzer in our head.

Of course, there is also the "upscale" factor that comes into play, just like buying a Rolex.